I don't care a damn, but--"

"But you wish it was you, eh?" chaffed the invisible neighbor, who
concealed in the depth of the hood on which the reservoirs of space
were emptying either a supreme indifference or a cruel desire to take a
rise out of Volpatte.

"I can't help it," said the other, simply.

"There's those that can help it for you," interposed the shrill voice
of Barque; "I knew one of 'em--"

"I, too, I've seen 'em!" Volpatte yelled with a desperate effort
through the storm. "Tiens! not far from the front, don't know where
exactly, where there's an ambulance clearing-station and a
sous-intendance--I met the reptile there."

The wind, as it passed over us, tossed him the question, "What was it?"

At that moment there was a lull, and the weather allowed Volpatte to
talk after a fashion. He said: "He took me round all the jumble of the
depot as if it was a fair, although he was one of the sights of the
place. He led me along the passages and into the dining-rooms of houses
and supplementary barracks. He half opened doors with labels on them,
and said, 'Look here, and here too--look!' I went inspecting with him,
but he didn't go back, like I did, to the trenches, don't fret
yourself, and he wasn't coming back from them either, don't worry! The
reptile, the first time I saw him he was walking nice and leisurely in
the yard--'I'm in the Expenses Department,' he says. We talked a bit,
and the next day he got an orderly job so as to dodge getting sent
away, seeing it was his turn to go since the beginning of the war.

"On the step of the door where he'd laid all night on a feather bed, he
was polishing the pumps of his monkey master--beautiful yellow
pumps--rubbing 'em with paste, fairly glazing 'em, my boy. I stopped to
watch him, and the chap told me all about himself. Mon vieux, I don't
remember much more of the stuffing that came out of his crafty skull
than I remember of the History of France and the dates we whined at
school. Never, I tell you, bad be been sent to the front, although he
was Class 1903, [note 1] and a lusty devil at that, he was. Danger and
dog-tiredness and all the ugliness of war--not for him, but for the
others, oui. He knew damned well that if he set foot in the
firing-line, the line would see that the beast got it, so he ran like
hell from it, and stopped where he was. He said they'd tried all ways
to get him, but he'd given the slip to all the captains, all the
colonels, all the ma